Mirror of Lida Sal: Tales Based on Mayan Myths and Guatemalan Legends

A never-before-translated collection of stories based on Mayan myth and Guatemalan folklore by the 1967 Nobel Laureate. Brilliantly inventive adaptations of Guatemalan folk tales intermesh the technical virtuosity, incomparable imagination, and profound poetic vision of a giant of twentieth-century literature.

Paperback, 146 pages

Published
September 1st 1997
by Latin American Literary Review Press
(first published 1964)

Community Reviews

A “Portico” and nine short stories imbued with qualities of Guatemalan and Mayan anthropology, history, myth all cast in the literary style of “natural dreamscapes” sometimes given to prolixity but overall devised “to reach the sweet inmost core of the delicate stone which juts from the jungle floor.” A re-invention of a Guatemala lost to its own people with some hope that “theirs one day shall be what at present rests in other hands.” For bold and determined readers only.

Guatemalan poet, novelist, diplomat, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967. Asturias's writings combine the mysticism of the Maya with epic impulse toward social protest. His most famous novel is EL SEÑOR PRESIDENTE (1946), about life under the rule of a ruthless dictator. Asturias spent much of his life in exile because of his public opposition to dictatorial rule.